Tag: Conservatism

Nullification, Secession and More Guns

There is no nullification. There is no secession. Federal law is the law of the land.

A.G. Jeff Sessions

Let that sentence sink in a bit. Just let it simmer there for awhile. Federal law is the law of the land. Local jurisdictions cannot make their own way according to the new masters we have elected to rule over us. Local politics is an impediment to federal will. What is amusing to me in this particular instance is that the confederates are currently in the White House. They don’t wear Klan hoods, but I know their stench.

On The Media – Mar 07, 2018 – Everything You Love Will Burn

Last week, we put out a special show hosted by The Guardian US’s Lois Beckett, devoted to how reporters should approach the alt-right, and white supremacy, in America, called “Face the Racist Nation.“

As a bonus, we’re putting out a full interview with one of the voices in that show: Norwegian journalist Vegas Tenold, whose new book, “Everything You Love Will Burn” chronicles his time covering the far right, up close and personal, for close to a decade. Lois talks to Vegas about how he has seen the far right evolve, the mistakes he sees journalists making and his relationship with the co-founder of the racist Traditionalist Worker Party, Matthew Heimbach.

Attorney General Sessions thinks he’s being clever, citing nullification and secession with a wink at his white nationalist brethren as they embark on the racist pursuit of the illegal alien in our midst. They know well the fruits of nullification and how badly attempts at secession have historically fared. After all, they are the benefactors of past nullification tactics by the newly re-acquired Southern confederate states after their secession bid failed. States that didn’t want to let the majority of citizens of their now black-majority states dictate state policy. So these very same white nationalists, with Andrew Johnson supporting them from the White House, nullified federal law that dictated voting rights for all and equal citizenship for all. They established the Jim Crow South and set us on a path for the showdown that occurred in the 1960’s over voting rights.

Nullification works, even if succession does not. Even if the reasons for nullification are unjust. Nullification can’t be countered by the federal government short of declaring martial law. This is the problem that A.G. Sessions and his boss, President Trump, currently face. A population that refuses to be governed from afar can’t be subjected to laws which they refuse to abide by, without putting boots on the ground in the areas that refuse to be governed by those laws.

As one very pertinent example, we’ve seen how well the drug war works. The drug war that A.G. Sessions wants to re-invigorate against the will of several state populations (and with the full support of the President) Fully half of the US population admits to indulging in taking illegal drugs, especially Marijuana, and the trillions of dollars we’ve spent as a society and a world organization has done nothing at all to impede the taking of drugs by people who want to take them. These programs have so utterly failed that several states have now legalized Marijuana consumption for recreational purposes, a direct violation of federal law. Laws that state that Marijuana is a schedule 1 Controlled Substance. The U.S. government doesn’t want to get into a shooting war with the various states on this issue, so they have looked the other way for more than a decade now while the states have steered their own course away from federal law. Law that A.G. Sessions claims cannot be ignored, is being ignored.

Alcohol prohibition, the gateway drug to regulation of substances in the U.S., was a complete failure long before the current drug war started. Worse than a failure, it lead directly to the rise of well-funded criminal organizations whose sole purpose was to get alcohol to the people who wanted it. Those same organizations exist today, supplying black-market demands for goods which governments everywhere have foolishly thought they could ban. So even with narcotics agents in every city and every town, corrupting every police force, they still can’t make a dent in drug usage anywhere or at any time. That is how well force works in changing the behaviors of people who don’t see the need to change.

MSNBC, All-In with Chris Hayes, Mar 07, 2018; Trump’s DOJ is suing California over “sanctuary” laws

A.G. Sessions is speaking, this time, to his lawsuit against California cities, and their refusal to play ball with the fascists who have taken over our federal government. Fascists who want to round up citizens of a region and remove them to some other place, presumably the place that they come from. They have their excuses for their behavior, just as the targeted citizenry have their reasons for being where they are.

Hold on though. We’re just getting started. Sessions wants to force the states to follow federal law, all the while that second amendment purists (armaphiles) think that their guns are the reason they have freedom. Here is another pertinent example to confound the already murky waters. Donald Trump is threatening to take guns away from gun owners, and then let due process run its course after he’s taken them. The literal nightmare scenario that neither Bill Clinton nor Barack Obama ever embarked on, even though they were accused of it thousands of times, is just casually tossed out as a viable alternative by the Caudillo that the GOP let manhandle his way into the White House. The armaphiles freaking out about calls to limit access to military grade hardware and they keep poking liberals who really can’t stand the OHM asking us hey, do you really want this guy taking your guns?

Google+ Being Liberal Community (image lost to time. Not even the Wayback machine can find the original now.)

The image at right asks the important question in black and white. Do the people who are convinced guns are the only answer want the liberals to be in armed insurrection? Or do they have a different point to make? Should Californians arm themselves to defend the state from the federales when they show up? What the fuck is the point here?

Conservatives in general are caught in some pretty serious cognitive dissonance right now. They pretend they want smaller government, but they also want police on every corner rounding up people they think shouldn’t be here, want police making sure people aren’t doing drugs they don’t want them doing, want police in every bedroom in every home in every city and town making sure that sex happens the way they want it to happen and that any female who happens to get pregnant having sex either dies or bears children from that sex. They know the only answer to their problems is possessing superior arms and the force of law, and yet the only solution that they leave their opponents is holding and using firearms against them.

Conservatives are in that epic catch-22 that Governor Reagan found himself in when confronted with armed black panthers patrolling the streets of Sacramento in 1967. Men who simply were tired of being targeted by the man and wanted to prove that they could take care of their own. He chose to take guns away from everyone while at the same time winking at white people to let them know they wouldn’t be targeted.

On The Media, Feb 21, 2018, Rinse and Repeat

We’ve become accustomed in the past 20 years to seeing the issue of guns in America broken down into two camps: gun control advocates — led by police chiefs and Sarah Brady — and the all-powerful National Rifle Association. In an interview that originally aired after Sandy Hook in 2012, Bob talks to Adam Winkler, author of Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms In America, who says there was a time, relatively recently, in fact, when the NRA supported gun control legislation, and the staunchest defenders of so-called “gun rights” were on the radical left.

The real solution, that guns don’t solve problems any longer, if they ever did, and we need to keep guns away from people who really shouldn’t have them, never occurs to them. They are now caught in the loop demonstrated in the image. Guns solve the problem but they’ll use guns against us, but guns solve the problem…

We can only hope they suffer mental breakdowns and are left as useless drooling hulks on the floors of their survivalist hideaways until  we show up to take their guns away. Because from what I can tell, most of them really shouldn’t have access to firearms. They’re all pretty much nuts. And as for what to do in the face of A.G. Sessions naked willingness to force the issue of deporting brownskinned people he doesn’t want to live in California, I suggest we wait and see what the ballot box says on that subject. Until then, nullification wins. Nullification wins even if we fail at the ballot box. Are they going to raise taxes to hire more ICE agents so they can round up eleven million people? No, I don’t think they will either.

StonekettleStation on Facebook

Whoever knowingly or willfully advocates, abets, advises, or teaches the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying the government of the United States or the government of any State, Territory, District or Possession thereof, or the government of any political subdivision therein, by force or violence, or by the assassination of any officer of any such government; or

Whoever, with intent to cause the overthrow or destruction of any such government, prints, publishes, edits, issues, circulates, sells, distributes, or publicly displays any written or printed matter advocating, advising, or teaching the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying any government in the United States by force or violence, or attempts to do so; or

Whoever organizes or helps or attempts to organize any society, group, or assembly of persons who teach, advocate, or encourage the overthrow or destruction of any such government by force or violence; or becomes or is a member of, or affiliates with, any such society, group, or assembly of persons, knowing the purposes thereof—

Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both, and shall be ineligible for employment by the United States or any department or agency thereof, for the five years next following his conviction.

18 U.S. Code § 2385 (Advocating overthrow of Government)

Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

It is the easiest thing in the world to belittle the weak, and the Texas Democratic party has been almost catatonic since J.J. Jake Pickle and Lyndon Baines Johnson’s Democratic force fell by the wayside. Texas Democrats had a brief resurgence in the 80’s and 90’s with Ann Richards as governor and with the Clinton’s in the White House; but truthfully, the Texas Democratic party of old died with Jake Pickle at about the turn of the century.

Which is probably a good thing, because the way the Democrats used to do business is mirrored in the way that the Texas Republicans currently do business. Gerrymandering. Stuffing ballot boxes. The outright purchase of votes and candidates by the wealthy class.

Media pundits know who holds the power now. It’s evident in every broadcast you listen to, every telecast you watch or any article you read. Oh, sure, they pay lip service to the notion that the Democrats are due for a comeback; but the corporate media, the corporation, that most feudal of all still existing human social structures, they make their money ass-kissing the powerful, just as their forebears did to kings and sultans, czars and sheiks. They ass-kiss the Republican party because the Republican party has shown their willingness to engage in a bit of the ol’ ultraviolence by letting a known money launderer and populist dictator wannabe take the reigns of power in the US.

As an example, here is the darling of the liberal press, NPR’s weekly politics podcast, talking about the first in the country primaries in Texas this Tuesday,

MARCH 7, 2018 Takeaways From Texas, As Midterms Kick Off

Even a casual listener of that podcast and the one that follows it can’t help but notice that the only voices heard aside from the hosts are conservative leaders. They even play the entire Ted Cruz ad, as if I haven’t heard it several times already on other liberal news organizations, as well as an interview with Ted Cruz! Free advertising and free airtime for the sitting Senator from Canada, er, Texas. Do we hear anything from his opponent in this race, Beto O’Rourke, aside from their making fun of his showing and his name, yucking it up right along with that son of a dominionist Cruz?

No, of course not. He’s never going to have any power, in their eyes. He’s just not pulling the interest of the news consumers, that skewed demographic that sits at home watching FOX news as if this was still the 1990’s or something. One might think the media would have learned a thing or two from the mess they made of the 2016 races, following the Orange Hate-Monkey (OHM) around like little puppies afraid they’ll miss the next tidbit of tasty gossip. All the while certain that their free advertising for this dangerously jingoist, nationalist, uninformed conspiracy fantasist wouldn’t help earn him the White House all on its own. Never consciously realizing that their dismissal of the favorite, a savvy, political insider who had been hounded by the press for nearly 40 years would end up creating a vacuum that something had to fill.

No, they just go on blithely doing the mindless reporting that they always do, looking to see what will get them the most viewer or listener numbers. Never really asking if these were the stories they should have spent their precious time talking and writing about. And so the numbers stack up in the conservative column, and the people follow the media who follow the assumed power, none of them ever asking if that leadership is a judas goat or not.

Let me break this down for you, the layman who doesn’t live and breath politics like I do. Republican primary turnout in Texas is high because in Texas you can only vote in one primary for one party. So if you are interested in selecting the leadership of your county or state (cities are generally non-partisan races by design)  you will go and vote in the primary of the party you think will carry statewide offices. And that party in Texas has been the Republican party. Democrats last won statewide office in 1994, the longest dry spell in recent US history. Only a fool votes in a primary for a party that will not control the state after the next election, or so the average voter thinks.

Ted Cruz was essentially unchallenged in his primary race, so Ted Cruz got every vote of every Texan who voted in the Republican primary unless they took the time to not vote for him. And since most Texans voted Republican he got more votes than the Democratic candidates did. Does this mean anything in the grand scheme of things? Only that most people want to be on the winning side in an election and will change their stances on subjects after the fact just to prove how right they always were.

If Texas had jungle primaries like California does, you would see something you’ve never seen in Texas before, cross-party voting on the primary ballot. You would see a lot less racism and persecution of the transgendered and homosexuals, because there would no target demographic that would vote on issues that arcane without partisan primary grandstanding. If Texas had districts that weren’t gerrymandered to a fraction of a percentage point on average party turn-out (like Pennsylvania) but were instead drawn by a non-partisan commission, you might see people voting for the other party just to get a change of government in their district. But we don’t have those things, and so the self-fulfilling prophecy of Republican victory is underscored by pundits who aren’t interested in how the opposition is hobbled in Texas, they just want to congratulate the victors no matter how rigged the races are at the outset.

Back in LBJ’s day, the Democrats did all this stuff too. It’s hard for them to criticize the Republicans for doing things that they did, that they will do again if we let them. The trick is to inform your leadership that you want a level playing field before you send them to office. That you want maximal voter turnout, sensible districting, wide-open primaries and real discussion of issues. Good luck on getting the media to stop following the easy story, the quick click reward. In the meantime you could just stop believing that pundits know what the future holds anymore than you do yourself right now. Then you might at least stop fulfilling the prophecies that they keep making.

Ballotpedia.org

The Blue Wave was real, and then it wasn’t, in the course of about a week. Stranger still, the made-up national story arc seemed to influence in-state coverage as well. Even though Democratic turnout was better than in any midterm primary since 2002, and more than than double 2014, commentators have consistently described the night as at least a mild disappointment, where the Democrats “fell short” of a goal that had been imagined for them.

The thing is, the way the state goes on the electoral college map doesn’t mean very much at all for the way Texas is governed. And while it’s possible that the party jumps back to life with the shock of winning one or two statewide elections — that there will be a proof of concept, and then everyone suddenly gets serious — it’s more likely that things change slowly, over an extended period of time, and that small gains and positive signs feed bigger gambits. What’s most important in the long run is the overall composition and strength of the Texas Democratic Party at the local and state level.

In that light, the fact that Democratic turnout doubled in urban counties while Republican turnout stayed essentially flat is significant. There are quite a few winnable legislative districts around those cities. The whole ballgame for the party is getting people to vote and to make a habit of voting. Trump is helping them do that — the trick now is to get it to stick, which it most certainly did not after the elections of 2006 and 2008.

Christopher Hooks – Texas Observer – The All-or-Nothing ‘Turning Texas Blue’ Narrative Needs to Be Retired
Texas Observer

The interview with Christopher Hooks on the Texas Standard today spells out exactly what I’m talking about. The media, focused on national races and their outcomes, never even considers the fact that the truism all politics is local holds sway even in places as large as Texas.

Texas Standard, Is It Time To Stop Talking About ‘Turning Texas Blue’?

Progressives are making inroads in Texas, and there isn’t a damn thing that Republicans and conservatives can do about it. For Democrats to win they have to offer real improvement on what the Republicans are doing now. Funding schools. Improving safety. Protecting the environment and moving Texas into the the next century. Listening to the OHM and his canuck croney Cruz talk, you would think that there aren’t fields of windmills in West Texas providing essential electricity to the grid. That solar wasn’t the future and that the emergence of electric cars in the cities isn’t a thing that is happening. You would think that Texas lives and dies by coal, which was never true, and that we’re still in the wildcat days of the oil boom in Texas, which we aren’t.

It’s time to put the conservatives where they belong, in the past with their fear of the transgendered and the homosexual. Their need for their religion to be front and center in everything they do. We cannot afford to be side-tracked into meaningless crusades against the different and the strange. There is real work being left undone because of their fear-mongering and immigrant hating. Time to roll up the sleeves and get back to work. 

The Psychology of Hate?

I had a few objections to this episode of Inquiring Minds. All of this ties back to the episode that aired right before the election last November, the episode where the hosts and journalists being interviewed just assumed that Hillary Clinton would win the election, that Trump voters were some crazy fringe of American society that just wanted to be heard? Yeah, that one. In this one they just assume that the internet trolls that pushed the Orange Hate-Monkey (OHM) onto the GOP stage and then laughed themselves all the way to the foreign-intervention inquest hearing, had a larger point they wanted to make other than to prove that Misguided Appallingly Gullible Americans (#MAGA) would believe anything they read on the internet. I’m sure those same trolls are still laughing after this episode.

Inquiring Minds – 192 ALI MATTU – The Psychology of Hate – September 11, 2017

OK. Here’s the problem with the guest’s take on polarization in the form of the sitting president. Setting aside the ingroup/outgroup bias that I have towards conservatives whom I consider barely capable of thought on a pretty regular basis considering who they allow to lead their party; I would say “since Reagan” but it’s actually been since Nixon, Republicans and conservatives are in love with money politics. It’s bad on the Democratic left as well, because that is the name of the game in this day and age, and that name is corruption. But their leaders don’t even pretend to disguise that they are doing the bidding of their funders. Trickle-down is a completely bankrupt theory of economics, but they still propose giving tax cuts to the wealthy because the wealthy don’t want to pay taxes. It certainly isn’t for the reasons that they pretend because it’s been demonstrated that money just pools in the wealthy people’s hands when you let wealthy people keep more money.

But I’m getting sidetracked into the bankrupt ideas. The problem with their leaders is that they get more and more corrupt. Nixon authorized a little B&E but that’s child’s play next to Reagan who bribed the Iranians or Bush the first who ran the CIA or the second that lied us into war in Iraq. And all of them ALL OF THEM pale beside the criminal, the huckster, the complete fraud that is Donald J. Trump. His connections to the Russian mafia go so deep you will need a rectal exam to figure out where they end. The election tampering was nothing compared to his dirty money ties to them that are just now coming to light and this is the guy they chose as their leader?

I mean, I sit down and break bread with conservatives everyday. I live in Texas after all, it is unavoidable. But Trump? Even David Frum can’t put enough distance between himself and Trump. The problem isn’t that the left has gone too far left or that there even is such a thing as “too liberal” (which is probably a point worth arguing) but if there is a thing called too liberal it’s going to be found somewhere residing in the heads of people who are willing to give a criminal like Trump a chance. He started his campaign with racism and I”m not waiting for his followers to start filling up concentration camps (currently referred to as immigration detention, just FYI) with their undesirables before I decide to do something.

There really is such a thing as a stupid idea, and giving a demonstrable criminal, a fraudulent deal-maker who has been sued nearly 6,000 times, a chance to run the country is the dumbest idea I’ve heard yet. But I’m sure I’ll hear something dumber from the Republicans pretty shortly, unless your guest beats them to it. 

Trump’s GOP in a Nutshell

MSNBC

This racist is the poster child for today’s GOP. If they don’t like him as their poster child, they should kick him out of their party and primary him. Because he is a joke. A laughingstock. A parody of every KKK member and Nazi saluting clueless rube in the country.

Seriously. Why do the Republicans not understand what they are allowing to grow in their midst?

Facebook. Steve King, racist. He was finally ousted from his seat in the GOP when he was primaried in 2020. Too late, GOP.

The Derangement of the Confantisphere

“Show respect,” that’s what you demand when you don’t have anything else, when people of color, women, the current generation, laugh at you because all you have is being an angry old white guy who thinks the world owes you something.

Stonekettle Station

Can someone please tell me what Barack Obama did that is worthy of so much hatred? What is the conservative conspiracy fantisphere (I will be shortening that phrase to confantisphere from now on. It is catchy) saying about him that I’m just not hearing? Let’s set all the crap about the Clinton’s aside here and nail down just exactly what Obama did that conservatives hate so much. Because I really can’t get a handle on that.

Obama was the most conservative federal spender since Dwight D. Eisenhower. Conservatives should be singing his praises, but don’t hold your breath waiting for conservative outlets to spin this the right way, they won’t. They’ll probably take the Heritage Foundation’s tack on the subject and insist that Bush II’s war costs should be saddled on Obama. From a liberal perspective, it’s easy to see why the headline should read Obama Best President Since Eisenhower.

Blue Wave – Trump’s golf count

Also. Also. Detail for me anything, ANYTHING that Trump has done. Anything. Go ahead, I’m waiting. Can’t name anything can you? That’s because he’s done nothing but golf and Tweet for six solid months two solid years. And he called Obama lazy in a typical racist fashion. He’s spent more time on vacation than Obama did in his first few years in office in his first six months. Trump is a mooch. A tax cheat. A con artist. A fraud. But he is not a president.

Fair warning. If you take me up on my challenge to detail what Obama has done, and your response has anything to do with #benghazi, then I’m recommending a straightjacket for the person uttering it. I’m not kidding, don’t go there.

Facebook

An Image Worth a Thousand Words – Facebook

The Right Question on Healthcare

The logic goes that if healthcare is a right, then healthcare providers become slaves.

If healthcare is a right, they say, then I (for example) am entitled to the labor of doctors and nurses and they cannot refuse me. If healthcare is a right, according to these Randian libertarians, then any doctor, any nurse, any healthcare provider must provide me with their services free of charge at any time. Because it’s my right, you see?

Which is a damned good example of why Atlas Shrugged should be regarded as a tediously mediocre science fiction novel and not a blueprint for civilization.

In America, guns are a right. The right, in a lot of ways. But you can’t just walk into a gun store and demand a gun as your due free of charge – not without getting shot, probably. The government isn’t obligated to provide you with a gun. Hell, we don’t even have subsidies for poor people who want a gun and can’t  afford one. And instead of turning gun manufacturers into slaves, it made them fabulously wealthy.

stonekettle.com

Using the logic libertarians apply to healthcare, I’ve pointed out to them that they can’t have the right to a gun, pretty much the way you draw it out. You can have a right to defend yourself but you cannot have a right to a weapon, the product of another man’s work. Their response generally has been to declare that argument pointless, because without a gun you are defenseless. They apparently haven’t heard of kitchen knives and baseball bats.

Doctors take an oath. They are required to treat the injured, within their ability to do so. To not offer help when it is needed, when it is available, is inhumane. To the extent that healthcare is generally available, it is a right of the citizenry to seek it. Just like food and shelter, healthcare should be provided to those in need.

The problem with conservatives and capitalists is that they seem to think that you can gain wealth through social austerity. That isn’t how modern economic systems work. Money is a debt instrument. If they want people to pay for things then give them the money to spend in enough quantities to meet their needs. Then we’ll know what the price and demand for goods and services really are, because everyone who needs a thing will be able to pay the market price to get it. I’m convinced that public health is too important to be treated as a commodity, but anything outside of public health concerns (screenings, inoculations, hospitals, research) should be fine treated in this way. Just as long as those in need are not required to do without.

That is the problem that zero-sum game types can’t wrap their heads around. With millions of Americans and billions of people on this planet, there is little we cannot do if we set our minds to doing it. We created these systems out of whole cloth in previous generations. There is nothing keeping us from maintaining them in perpetuity aside from our own lack of will. Our own greed. We’ve let the greedy run this country for far too long now. It’s time for a change.

A comment on stonekettle.com

Postscript

I had forgotten about this comment on Stonekettle’s article until he reposted the article on Facebook the other day as part of an illustration of what a change in the presidency and his agenda can do to address the plights of millions of people.

twitter.com/POTUS (facebook.com/Stonekettle)

Trumpcare Dissected

I find it remarkable that Trump supporters like Steven Moore believe it’s possible to insure the sick and the poor without requiring any sacrifices from the healthy and wealthy. This is conservative rubbish. – Robert Reich on Facebook


RAWSTORY, WATCH: Robert Reich rips into conservative over his ‘specious’ math on Trumpcare

Conservatives and libertarians console themselves with the belief that the charitably minded will pay for required services. I heard that hand-waving excuse countless times when I was a libertarian. I half-believed it myself. The truth is that programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc were established precisely BECAUSE charity failed to take care of these people. That studies have shown the wealthy will not give as much to charity percentage-wise as the middle or even lower classes will. That it is a humanitarian principle that everyone contribute to public health and public welfare, for the benefit of us all.

This kind of civic-mindfulness needs to be re-established in America once again, because we have clearly lost our way. I even encounter professed liberals who do not agree that there shouldn’t be a thing called the working poor. That having a job means you should be able to afford to feed, house, clothe and tend to the health needs of your family. If liberals have lost sight of this grounding principle voiced by the most influential minds in the enlightenment, I fear we have even darker times ahead of us than we are currently living through.

Facebook status update backdated to the blog.

Death Panels?

Modern Eugenics?

And those states are going to let you die.

Yes, they are. They are going to do it for profit. They’re going to do it because they think you are a luxury. They going to do it because they can’t stand the thought of having to pay for some baby with a heart defect or somebody who’s HIV positive or somebody who has cancer or the mentally ill.

These are the REAL death panels, right here.

That is some Nazi shit. Literally. Aktion T4, the Nazi program to eliminate defectives. The people they considered “luxuries.” And don’t your forget for one minute that Eugenics began here in the US, the Nazis got the idea from US. When states were allowed to decide, they were perfectly happy to sterilize those they deemed unfit and less than perfect. Luxuries. – Stonekettle Station on Facebook

What this is, more than anything, is an underscoring of something I’ve known for a long, long time. Employers should be banned from inquiry into the health of any of its employees. Not only should they not be allowed to offer insurance of any kind, they should be forbidden to even ask, officially. My health is my business. Not the states’ business, and not my employer’s business. My business.

It all comes back to the problem of who pays for that for most people. This is what public health is established for. Public health’s job is to pay for the care that the individual cannot afford, or that requiring the individual to pay for reduces the application of good health practices.

If you want to pay less for healthcare as a society, you have to encourage people to seek health advice regularly. Get their injections. Get their screenings and checkups. There should be rewards for this behavior, not costs, because doing these things saves the public money. You never hear conservatives talk about these facts. Why? That’s a good question, one you will have to ask conservatives about. Jim hazards several answers to this question, several pointed answers. But in the end, conservatives will have to answer the question for themselves. Why do you think that individual health is anybody’s business aside from the individual?

Medicare for all is the only way to fix America’s healthcare problems. Medicare for all would move public health out of the commercial morass it has been in and make it tax funded as it always should have been. Require the government to negotiate for better prices from drug manufacturers rather than forbid them from negotiating as they currently are. It is time to stop this slide towards kleptocracy before we wake up and discover we live in Russia.

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George Carlin Again

George Carlin on Goodreads

I was gifted George Carlin Again for Christmas and I’m finally getting around to watching it (playing Dead Space as well. Another gift) watching Carlin reminded me of this meme image which I was recently informed proved George Carlin is an ass.

No, what it proves is conservatives are full of shit which comes out of asses. I think the speaker was confused about the subject matter.

I’ve often wondered what George Carlin would make of the Orange Hate-Monkey being president. He, like so many others long past, would certainly have more than a few choice words to deliver on the subject. Most of it funny, little of it good. Carlin never hesitated to insult stupid wherever he found it, even if he found it in his own head. Conservatives simply present a target-rich environment, especially when it comes to the subject of economics.

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An Excerpt from George Carlin on Charlie Rose: 3-26-1996
THIS COUNTRY IS FINISHED GEORGE CARLIN ON COUNTDOWN

Conservatives Love the Insane War on Drugs

Walls, barbed wire, wars, hate, division, intolerance, exclusion, uncertainty, fear, misery in all its myriad forms, THOSE are the very things that drive people to drugs in the first place. THOSE are the reasons why marginalized communities have such high degrees of suicide and alcoholism and drug use. Because they are desperately trying to ESCAPE.

And for a president who preaches hate and division and intolerance and exclusion and war and walls and fear announcing in front of a room full of hate and division and intolerance and exclusion and war and goddamned WALLS that he is going to somehow stop the flow of drugs into this country — stop the very demand for escape that he himself creates and perpetuates every single day — that is the very pinnacle of ironic cluelessness. That, that right there, is everything wrong with modern conservatism in a single sentence.

If you want a world people don’t want to escape from, then you have to build a better world not higher walls.

Jim Wright Stonekettle Station on Facebook

If you want to end reliance on drugs, you first have to understand why people do drugs. Escapism is only part of the equation; or rather, what we are escaping too is more the question. The book Storming Heaven; LSD and the American Dream attempts to answer that question. Carl Hart’s more recent work High Price: A Neuroscientist’s Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society dissects the farce that is drug interdiction in the US and how we are destroying ourselves with this insane war on drugs.

As usual, Jim has the farce pegged. If you read the entire article at his link, you’ll see how he breaks it all down. It is a self-perpetuating excuse to waste lives and treasure, like most modern warfare. I have written extensively on the subject of the Insane War on Drugs. It is another of those issues that I have not changed my stance on, because I just happened to have been right all along. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

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